Quite and interesting question. We’ve heard it time and again, to build trust with Google, and that it’s probably the best way to improve your site’s web presence.

To be honest, this concept is more complex than it looks like. There are more than a couple of simple ways or methods that goes into building trust with the search engines. But before we go into it, let me ask you a question.

Why do you trust a person ?

Or rather

When do you start trusting a person?

Let me guess.

- Because the person is genuine.
- Because he has talent and resources.
- He’s fair and not evil.
- He’s got no vested interests, and knows what he’s up to.
- He doesn’t fake.

And probably a hundred more reasons, right ?

Well, it’s probably the same with Google. Take a look from Google’s perspective. It has millions of website to sort and index, and your website is probably one among the millions that’s sprouting up everyday. And Google has to index you too, which is like finding a needle in a haystack.

So right from finding your website first to it’s growth, the search engines gathers all the metrics to decide whether the site is “trustworthy” or not.

Of course, by “trustworthy”, it doesn’t mean the authenticity of the site or it’s content. Google, I believe prefers to take a fair stand on the right for websites to publish content. It doesn’t want to involve itself in deciding the content, but gives everyone the right to publish their opinions. And if the content is popular that means that the site has some “substance” in it anyway.

Alright so coming back to the authority quotient, what are the things that a webmaster might want to look in to, to help build the trust with search engines.

1 – Get good references from authority sources.

Let’s just not call it “backlinks”, that’s a lame term. By references I mean not just a text link, but good recommendations from other sources that are already gotten into the good books of Google. Some people call it “editorial articles”. Ok whatever.

2 – Refrain from using duplicate content.

No I didn’t say that you shouldn’t write on a topic that’s already been published. Write it in your own way. Bring in hues and colors that people will love. Don’t just end up imitating someone. Put some effort from your side. Forget the CTRL+C, CTRL+V shortcuts.

3 – Be active.

If people should like you (people including the search engines), you got to give them value first. Think of one good reason why they should visit your site once a day. Are you giving free money ? If not, give them something to take back home. Value, quality, call it as you like but unless you keep delivering it regularly, they’re going to find another guy.

4 – Get popular.

I prefer to read techcrunch.com, for technical updates that a Ad cluttered one month long blog on blogspot.com. Reason – I know that TC is genuine and I’m quite likely to read any breaking story first there than anywhere else. (I don’t mean that blogspot.com users can’t be popular). So the idea is to develop that popularity factor. Not everyone can be TC, but once you start building that little bit of popularity, you’ll see the “band wagon effect” in action. Traffic will start trickling down slowly and steadily.

5 – Be technically sound.

Of course yes, You got to plug all the holes and be a healthy website. Now down times, no/minimum broken links etc. If there are more errors that’s obviously a red flag, a big one that is.

6 – Go places.

Syndicate your content on the social media. Get people to read them, and use them as your “tentacles” to grab in traffic to the site. The more your content or snippets of it go places, the more chances of you being a popular guy. And yea, I didn’t mean you doing it all the time. Social Media is all about crowd sourcing, so the best idea will be to get people vote/submit for you.

7 – Don’t play tricks, be cool.

Well, some people just don’t get it. So I think you should try one or two may be and see how it comes back at you. I’m sure you’ll agree that none of those black hat techniques/ quick fixes will give you any mileage. Wise guys refrain from doing such stuff and that’s the whole idea. Google would want to only make friends with genuine guys, not cheaters.

So essentially, building trust with Google and the other search engines is like building a relationship. You got to be good, lovable, smart and attractive for it to last long, if you know what I mean.

Alright, we know that Google has already been experimenting and implemented the personalized search results. So what does it mean to SEO ? Now that every individual gets tailor made search results based on their past use history and even preferences (SearchWiki), what happens to the natural organic results ?

Well, according to Google,

Personalized Search is an improvement to Google search that orders your search results based on what you’ve searched for before. Learning from your history of searches and search results you’ve clicked on, Personalized Search brings certain results closer to the top when it’s clear they’re most relevant to you.

Google’s idea is to,give you the best relevant results based on who you are and what you’ve been interested in.

So that means, if I searched for “Chip” and clicked on the third result which is on “Children’s Medical Aid”, the next time I search for “Chip”, I might get the once third result, Childrens Medical Aid on the first place. And I think that’s a fair game.

It’s a way to customize your search results with your rankings, deletions, and notes — plus, see how other people using Google have tailored their searches”. You can promote or demote search results, add new web pages to your search results, post comments and read other people’s comments.

We’ve all been using SearchWiki lately and it’s quite interesting. I can make the 22nd results the first and even tell others why they should try it.

But I’ve not seen any clues so far that tells me that my preferences are shared with others. The wiki is probably only my own. For everyone else, the 22nd result that I pushed up is still the 22nd result.

Google says,

It’s not clear whether user votes influence the overall ranking algorithm, but it’s likely that this is not the case.

Yea I get it. So we have a wiki for our own help. That’s fair again. But the comments on search results are supposed to be shared with others, and I haven’t seen any reports yet that confirms this. In fact, I get to see only my comments now. May be it’s not yet active on my account ?

Anyways, these two features from Google give me the idea that somehow, someday the concept of organic search results is going to be more complicated, while being more custom made for each user.

So does that mean that SEO has lesser influence on the search results ?

Even when we are inclined to think so, that might not just be the case. This is how I see it.

- SEO is definitely going to remain significant and Google algorithms will heavily rely on backlinks to determine SERPs.

- I can see a focus shift to “traffic” as one of the crucial factors (among lot others) that determines why a website is more relevant than other. (It’s not a single stand alone concept but an addition to the existing SEO metrics)

- User preferences are only going to be an addition to the organic results. After all you need to have the best 10 results anyway, to mix and match them according to your preferences.

So essentially, SEO is going to be the backbone that decides the SERPs, like it’s always been. But user preferences will make it possible for us to see the best results for us. SEO will still remain significant, or so do I prefer to believe.

If you answered “hard work and patience”, you’re probably a regular DSB reader. But today, I have a slightly different story to tell.

No..we are not talking black hat here, but I thought a little clarification is required on what is really hard work and patience that pays off at the end.

Whenever I discuss with a client on what the targets should be, there is no ambiguity when it comes to results. Almost all, wants definitive results. Some prefer page views and traffic (bigger players mostly) while some want definite search engine ranks for particular keywords. But results are key. And I completely agree.

In fact, there are more than one way of achieving those results. That is where the difference in white hat and black hat comes. White hat can give you long lasting definitive, authority yielding results. While black hat can give you quick fix, short term results.

In my opinion, more than hard work, what matters is “smart work”.

Smart work means more sophisticated methods but less time spent on wastage or indefinite things.

Like for example, in order to get higher ranks on Google, you can select either of the two ways.

So, basically it’s about how you formulate the strategies. One can work towards just achieving keyword rankings, or can look at traffic generation through selective keyword targeting. Each may work differently for each type of business you are in. And anyone is free to adopt and device their own, but so long as they are “result yielding” and “less time wasting”, you can look forward to an effective process.

Moral of the story: Getting higher ranks on Google is to be honest – easy. And not all results are delivered quickly, but that doesn’t mean you have to wait for months together to increase your revenue. Be clever and smart, better find a shorter , more effective way to success than old, tried, saturated and inefficient techniques. They work, all you need is a little confidence.

What do the features of YouTube mean to the Internet market and Internet marketer?

As the advent of television created a revolution in off-line marketing, Web 2.0 marketing has changed for the better since the launch of video sharing websites, especially YouTube. YouTube has been ever since helping the Internet marketers for the presentation of their product advertisements easily and economically.

YouTube has also made it possible for the Internet marketers to train people in the usage of their products by uploading audiovisual tutorials. People can now comfortably watch everything the online market has to present without leaving their homes. Apart from the commercial products, people can watch entertaining videos, for example movies, songs, events, etc.

The high-quality videos that can be uploaded to YouTube can be easily streamed without any distortion to any personal computer that is connected to the Internet with even moderate connection speeds. The modern web technology has enabled videos to be of highest quality yet without becoming too bulky in size.

Internet marketers can now either produce and market their own products or can market affiliate products. Doing business online is a far cheaper option to doing business off-line. YouTube and other media sharing websites have reduced the advertising costs and have increased the product exposure worldwide. In near future, the online advertising market will quickly scale new heights in popularity and growth. The videos require no maintenance and can be watched by millions of viewers worldwide 24 hours a day.

The Internet marketers have one of the best advertising media at their disposal in the form of YouTube. A clever Internet marketer can even quickly become a very rich man without much efforts and investment if he or she systematically utilises the advertising and marketing powers of video sharing websites like YouTube.

The Expenses for marketing and advertising are inexpensive — almost free for the Internet marketers when they upload their commercial products and services on video sharing sites like YouTube. They don’t even have too pay the bandwidth charges to these websites! Their videos can be kept live on the video sharing website as long as they want without paying any fees.

Due to the fact that there is a lack of competition, you can successfully market your products and services using websites like the YouTube. As Google tends to rank YouTube videos very high in the SERPs, and thereby producing massive web traffic to your website, your audiovisual promotion produces fantastic marketing and sales results.

Comparing search engine optimisation using YouTube and other search engine optimisation methods, it is not difficult to see the huge differences. Search engine optimisation using YouTube is much easier and very inexpensive — almost free! — compared to other methods of search engines optimisation (SEO). Getting higher ranks in the SERPs is extremely difficult, even to the professionals, making it almost impossible to compete with the established websites in your niche market.

As mentioned earlier, a good video uploaded to YouTube can quickly generate a high page rank of that page where the video resides and can almost immediately generate huge amount of web traffic to your website if used in an appropriate manner. As you are using audiovisual method, it is much easier for the viewers to grade your video.

A good video message that brings very effective solution to viewers’ problem will always impress the viewers. If you can redirect this laser-targeted traffic to your website then it will impact your sales efforts positively. I call this traffic laser-targeted because, possibly only the people who have been impressed by the content mentioned in your video and wish to learn more about your products and services will find “time” to visit your website! Hence, you need lot more views of your video by the viewers to create more web traffic to your site.

Watching your good video that generates interest will help create a positive frame of mind and conversion of this highly targeted traffic into customers can be easily achieved. Although YouTube is mainly used by amateur people in creating chiefly comical videos, videos of family events, or even copying movies, songs, and even adult content to “impress” net surfers. But, you as an Internet marketer can use the extremely powerful features of YouTube for your business benefits.